A fuller picture on who George Floyd was:
George Floyd, From ‘I Want to Touch the World’ to ‘I Can’t Breathe’
Mr. Floyd had big plans for life nearly 30 years ago. His death in police custody is powering a movement against police brutality and racial injustice.
NY Times 09June2020
Full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-who-is.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
(excerpt)... As a tight end, Mr. Floyd helped power his football team to the state championship game in 1992. In one exhilarating moment that was captured on video — and circulated after his death — Mr. Floyd soars above an opponent in the end zone to catch a touchdown pass.
After graduating from high school, Mr. Floyd left Texas on a basketball scholarship to South Florida Community College (now South Florida State College). “I was looking for a power forward and he fit the bill. He was athletic and I liked the way he handled the ball,” said George Walker, who recruited Mr. Floyd. “He was a starter and scored 12 to 14 points and seven to eight rebounds.”
Mr. Floyd transferred two years later, in 1995, to Texas A&M University’s Kingsville campus, but he did not stay long. He returned home to Houston — and to the Third Ward — without a degree.
Known locally as the Tré, the Third Ward, south of downtown, is among the city’s historic black neighborhoods, and it has been featured in the music of one of the most famous people to grow up there, Beyoncé. At times, life in the Bricks was unforgiving. Poverty, drugs, gangs and violence scarred many Third Ward families. Several of Mr. Floyd’s classmates did not live past their 20s.
Soon after returning, Mr. Floyd started rapping. He appeared as Big Floyd on mixtapes created by DJ Screw, a fixture in Houston’s hip-hop scene in the 1990s. His voice deep, his rhymes purposefully delivered at a slow-motion clip, Mr. Floyd rapped about “choppin’ blades” — driving cars with oversize rims — and his Third Ward pride.
For about a decade starting in his early 20s, Mr. Floyd had a string of arrests in Houston, according to court and police records. One of those arrests, for a $10 drug deal in 2004, cost him 10 months in a state jail.
Four years later, Mr. Floyd pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and spent four years in prison. He was released in 2013 and returned home again — this time to begin the long, hard work of trying to turn his life around, using his missteps as a lesson for others.
Stephen Jackson, a retired professional basketball player from Port Arthur, Texas, met Mr. Floyd a year or two before Mr. Jackson joined the N.B.A. They had sports in common, Mr. Jackson said, but they also looked alike — enough to call each other “twin” as a term of endearment.
“I tell people all the time, the only difference between me and George Floyd, the only difference between me and my twin, the only difference between me and Georgie, is the fact that I had more opportunities,” he said, later adding, “If George would have had more opportunities, he might have been a pro athlete in two sports.”
After prison, Mr. Floyd became even more committed to his church. Inspired by a daughter, Gianna Floyd, born after he was released, Mr. Floyd spent a lot of time at Resurrection Houston, a church that holds many of its services on the basketball court in the middle of Cuney Homes. He would set up chairs and drag out to the center of the court the service’s main attraction — the baptism tub.
“We’d baptize people on the court and we’ve got this big old horse trough. And he’d drag that thing by himself onto that court,” said Patrick Ngwolo, a lawyer and pastor of Resurrection Houston, who described Mr. Floyd as a father figure for younger community residents.
Eventually, Mr. Floyd became involved in a Christian program with a history of taking men to Minnesota from the Third Ward and providing them with drug rehabilitation and job placement services. “When you say, ‘I’m going to Minnesota,’ everybody knows you’re going to this church-work program out of Minnesota,” Mr. Ngwolo said, “and you’re getting out of this environment.” His move would be a fresh start, Mr. Ngwolo said, his story one of redemption.
In Minnesota, Mr. Floyd lived in a red clapboard duplex with two roommates on the eastern edge of St. Louis Park, a leafy, gentrifying Minneapolis suburb. Beginning sometime in 2017, he worked as a security guard at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center, a downtown homeless shelter and transitional housing facility. The staff members got to know Mr. Floyd as someone with a steady temperament, whose instinct to protect employees included walking them to their cars.
“It takes a special person to work in the shelter environment,” said Brian Molohon, executive director of development at the Salvation Army Northern Division. “Every day you are bombarded with heartache and brokenness.”
Even as Mr. Floyd settled into his position, he looked for other jobs. While working at the Salvation Army, he answered a job ad for a bouncer at Conga Latin Bistro, a restaurant and dance club. Jovanni Thunstrom, the owner, said Mr. Floyd quickly became part of the work family. He came in early and left late. And though he tried, he never quite mastered salsa dancing.
“Right away I liked his attitude,” said Mr. Thunstrom, who was also Mr. Floyd’s landlord. “He would shake your hand with both hands. He would bend down to greet you.”
Mr. Floyd kept a Bible by his bed. Often, he read it aloud. And despite his height, Mr. Floyd would fold himself in the hallway to frequently pray with Theresa Scott, one of his roommates. “He had this real cool way of talking. His voice reminded me of Ray Charles. He’d talk fast and he was so soft-spoken,” said Alvin Manago, 55, who met Mr. Floyd at a 2016 softball game. They bonded instantly and became roommates. “He had this low-pitched bass. You had to get used to his accent to understand him. He’d say, ‘Right-on, right-on, right-on.’”
Mr. Floyd spent the final weeks of his life recovering from the coronavirus, which he learned he had in early April. After he was better, he started spending more time with his girlfriend, and he had not seen his roommates in a few weeks, Mr. Manago said.
Like millions of people, his roommates in the city that was to be his fresh start watched the video that captured Mr. Floyd taking his last breaths. They heard him call out for his late mother — “Mama! Mama!”
On Tuesday morning, 15 days after that anguished cry, Mr. Floyd will be laid to rest beside her.
Hey, I tried. But some people can't stop being in a state of denial.
